Mercury, Mars and Uranus in conjunction, and the way you look tonight
by Cuits
Summary: Another place, another time, but the ripples of Comity still linger between them. Post-Syzygy and kind of cannon-compliant season 10 ;)


If somebody asked Scully the best thing about being back with the Bureau after all this time — back in the X-Files— she would have said without a doubt, that the added years of experience, as a special agent, a civilian and even as a fugitive, had provided her with the kind of gravitas and wisdom that enables her both to do a better, less prejudiced job, and to appreciate its positive consequences in an adequate way.

If somebody asked her, what was the worst thing about regaining her old job, she would have had to say that the running and walking around all day in high heels has become really extenuating, her patience with silliness and impostors tends to grow thinner with every passing day and she feels like her memory pretty much sucked.

For example, she can't even remember the last time she bought cigarettes on a whim of stress and crankiness and actually smoked them. It was probably back when there was still allowed to light a cigarette in seedy hotel rooms with with curtains and carpets that smell like rancid naphthalene, like the one she is currently padding up and down as she smokes.

Not that anybody would ever ask these or any other question of the sort because clearly, nobody is really interested in what she has to say — least of all her stupid, gullible, arrogant partner.

The glorified nanny slash convenient pathologist that was never cool enough to play with the boys. Yep, that's her. Whatever.

She kicks off her heels carelessly in an uncharacteristic fit of rage and dares the smoke detector on the ceiling to even think about betraying her with its annoying alarm as she exhales the last drag. She doesn't even open up a window to dissipate the smoke. Yes, contrary to popular belief she can be thoughtless and rebellious like that.

"Hey Scully, take a look at what we have just found."

The voice of Mulder coming from the hallway of the ratty hotel is barely a warning as he decides to give up any pretense of manners or decorum and just opens the door of her room as if he was perfectly entitled to it.

She is almost glad that she took her shoes off before or she would have probably just thrown them at him with decisive intention to harm.

"Mulder, this is _my_ room," she says with all the calm venom she can summon.

He looks stupefied for a moment, like of all the things that he has seen and all the things that he _believes_ he has seen along these many years, her being protective of her space and intimacy is the most outworldly of them all.

The light projected by the dirty lightbulbs is so yellow that it makes everything look straight out of the seventies — everything except Mulder, of course, who looks just ageless and ready to seduce an harem with his rumpled dark suit and his tie undone hanging loosely from the open collar of his shirt.

"Yes, I know, because it's where you have been loitering most of the evening as _we_ / out there are actually doing the job."

He matches her meanness word for word and she hates him for it. And not in a kind of twisted, sexual way that would make her feel a little appalled at herself. Not. At. All.

"We?" She asks because she can't stop the pettiness. She wouldn't stop it even if she could.

"Yes, _we_." His eyes brightens with the challenge of eliciting a response out of her. "Sheriff Stilinski and me, of course."

"Of course," she says with a fake, sweet smile and so much tension her jaw is going to be sore in the morning.

The gleam of victory in Mulder's eyes is almost too much to take and as she looks behind, though the open door and into the hallway she can indeed see Sheriff Stilinski making doe eyes at her partner's back, cartoon hearts almost popping out of his ears as he looks at Mulder, completely and absolutely fascinated.

For God's sake.

The man has been following Mulder around and blatantly ignoring her since they set foot in the forsaken, good for nothing town, and her partner, far from discouraging him and keeping a professional distance has been flirting back with him all day long, sharing stolen glances and little jokes and freezing her out of the all boy club.

Not that she would like to be included in this little game of theirs, of course. She is a consummate professional first and foremost and Sheriff Stilinski is not as terribly attractive once you spent some time looking for imperfections. And his cologne smells funny.

In any case, she is very pointedly not looking at Stilinski's perfectly sculptured jaw as she crosses the distance and closes the door effectively evicting the Sheriff out of the room and the conversation.

"That was rude." Mulder's tone is recriminatory and he is far too close now, towering over her. Well, she refuses to step back and give him the satisfaction of the upper ground and to dispel the idea that she can be easily manipulable this way. She also refuses to grasp the lapels of his jacket and bring him down to smack her mouth on his, but the motive here is a little more hazy.

She huffs her indignation and he actually leans a little closer.

"You have been smoking," he says with evident repulsion, his mouth so close to her now that he betrays himself.

"And you have been drinking." She looks him up and down with reprobation. "I hope all that hard, tough work with the Sheriff has paid off satisfactorily."

Her words are charged and sound as dirty as she has intended them. She is almost on her tiptoes now, her arms crossed over her chest defensively and maybe to force the cleavage of her shirt a little. Mulder's pupils are blown, his jaw squared and his hands over his hips in passive-aggressive provocation.

"Oh, believe me. There has been plenty _satisfaction_."

He drags the last word dropping his voice, the jerk, and Scully is suddenly flooded with vivid memories of his hands on her body, both of them panting on the kitchen floor in front of the open refrigerator. She wants to strangle him for it although the cause-effect like is a little bit blurred for her to explain it coherently.

"Agents?" Sheriff Stilinski's baritone voice comes from the other side of the closed door and Scully sends him a silent, telepathic warning to choose wisely his next words. "I just got a call. There is another body."

It had taken a significant amount of money but after locating just the right astrologist and asking the right questions, Mulder felt comfortable enough with his conclusion about the cause and nature of the murders.

"So what you are saying is that a couple of teenagers that share the same birthday are killing people who cross them? Telepathically?"

They are back in his room after he has managed to convince the Sheriff to keep the teenagers separately under custody for the next twelve hours or so. To be fair, it hasn't been that hard to convince Stilinski to follow his instructions to the letter.

Scully, on the other hand, was proving a lot harder to get on board.

"Yes, due to a cosmic lining up," he says with conviction. It seems to him that everything is pretty self-explanatory.

Scully pads the carpet of the room up and down with a relentless frown and her arms crossed over her chest. She looks like a caged cat — a particularly pissed-off caged cat.

"A cosmic lining up? Really, Mulder?" Her tone is plainly demeaning and he guesses that she is just waiting to turn around in her pacing to roll her eyes exaggeratedly.

It should be noted that he is being excessively patient in his dealings with her, putting up with her attitude and her coldness. Mulder is not a violent man but the way she sighs at everything he says makes him want to bend her over the nearest horizontal surface and teach her a lesson. The kind of lesson that involves some spanking and maybe pulling her hair just so as he bites the back of her neck, which is probably why it is a good thing that he has already a couple of vodka tonics in his system taming his impulses.

"We have seen it before, Scully."

"Have we?"

The incredulity of her whole demeanor is almost like a physical blow to his gut, or maybe a little lower and Mulder stands up and takes a long step towards her, effectively blocking her path.

"Yes. In Comity, all those years ago," he says using the advantage of his height to imprint gravitas to his statement, which is something he almost never does. "You can't tell me you don't remember Comity."

She knows exactly what he's doing and stares at him with plain contempt in her eyes. They are close enough that from his vantage point is impossible not to stare at the abyss of her cleavage but she doesn't back down, Mulder knows she won't back down because that would be like yielding.

"And yet here I am, telling you exactly that."

This is ridiculous, entirely ridiculous. He has taken his jacket and tie off and his shirt is rumpled, the sleeves rolled up his arms while she looks pristine, with her hair perfectly straightened and pinned up in a bun. He wants to run his fingers through her hair until it looks sleeped on and messy, like that time they spent a whole day in bed while it snowed outside. He remembers her without make up under the sheets, wearing thick wool socks and an oversized soft jersey and nothing else while he went down on her for hours.

"You are acting like a—", the word bitch appears in his mind in neon writing but he has the presence of mind to not say it out loud, "—a very narrow minded person."

"Oh? Is that your _professional_ opinion? Should I be running around behind you with puppy eyes agreeing on every half-assed theory you want to throw around? I think you mistake me with someone else."

Ah. Sheriff Stilinski. He has been on the verge of sleeping with the guy just to spite Scully. He still might do it if she keeps pushing it like that.

"Do you want to know how it is that I remember Comity so well?" He aims his words to hurt. There is a little voice at the back of his brain telling him that this is all on the cosmic lining up but he is quick to disregard it. "I remember because you were as jealous because of the Detective of the case back then as you are now."

Scully's intake of air leaves without oxygen the entire room. Her eyes sparkle with passionate rage but her voice is as calm as controlled as it can be expected when she speaks. "Really?" She takes half a step forward and now they are both as close to each other as two people who are not touching can be. "And why are you so sure that I'm not lusting after Stilinski's ass?" she hisses.

And that is what finally spur him to action. Maybe it's because it's a blatant lie or maybe it is because there is a possibility that it isn't, and the memory of her, moaning and pliable under him, is a little too vivid in his mind.

He turns her around and pushes her against the room door. There is a surprised gasp and a light thud as both her hands land on the wood that almost give him some sense of vindication. He imposes his body against hers, his chest against her back, his crotch against her ass.

"Admit it," he says against the shell of her ear. His whole, gigantic hand exploring the exposed base of her neck, almost as he did ages ago in Alaska, when they were young and green and almost innocent. "Admit that you were jealous."

His other hand goes to the side of her hip, her thigh and grabs and pulls up the somehow slimmery cloth of her tight, tube skirt. Up, up, up, until it is pretty much all bunched around her waist and she opens her legs wider by her own volition.

"Or what?"

He pulls the collar of her blouse down and bites at her nape, hard enough to leave a mark. She smells like cigarettes and a cologne he doesn't recognize. She smells almost like a stranger and it drives him mad.

"Admit it."

He thrust his hips against her and she groans but doesn't speak, instead she arches her spine and pushes back against him.

He wonders what else is different since the last time they were together, since before he was too down the hole to care and she was brave enough to leave.

"Admit that you wanted me back then, Scully," he warns, and just to prove his point, his hand travels from her rumpled skirt to the front of her underwear and presses against the damp cloth. "Admit that you still want me now."

She bucks her hips, first against his hand and then throws her ass back again against his erection but she doesn't yield.

"No."

She is a little breathless but not nearly enough to appease him.

"No?"

"No," she insists.

This is a war declaration and he shouldn't be surprised. They have been through so much together for so long that there are no misunderstandings left between them to sort out, no problems to work out or wrinkles to smooth. This is plain and ruthless savagism for the sake of it. He has made love with Scully so many times that it makes sense for them to also make war with each other.

He untangles the neat bun of her head with one hand, tossing around the pins carelessly until the locks of hair fall around his fingers. Is as soft as he remembers, it's also blonder, which for some reason annoys him.

His other hand maneuvers with dexterity around her underwear, until the pads of his fingers are on her without any other barrier between them. She pushes her hips down and forward, as much as the limited space between her and the door allows her, and groans. Loudly.

"I am going to make you say it, Scully."

It doesn't feel like a game or role play. He means it, he means it down to every fiber of his being, like winning this sort of confrontation is everything he has left in the world.

It's not the best angle but he pushes two fingers inside of her all at once but she is wet enough that he hardly meets any resistance. He bites the side of her neck, her pulse point and fists his hand in her hair pulling only slightly.

Scully's breathing hitches, one of her hands hits the door out of frustration when he uses the bulk of his body to press harder against her and limit the movement of her hips. His fingers, the heel of his hand working on her, in her with the proficiency provided by years of repeated experience, like a long, lost craft — like an art.

"Fuck."

He drags his teeth over her skin, licks and sucks while his fingers curl rhythmically inside her.

"Dana Scully swearing, what a rare occurrence."

"Fuck you," she say but it lacks conviction as she grasps for air, as she hits the door again and her legs spread farther apart.

"Such a dirty mouth, Scully, we are going to have to do something about that."

The grey, acrylic carpet was proving to be cruel on her knees, slowly burning the skin every time she moves, the floor beneath it far too hard for her age.

She has lost the track of time a little, everything is either going too fast or too slow since she came against the door, fully clothed and with Mulder's fingers deep inside her. Their clothes have long since been removed so she can see the marks she has inflicted on Mulder's skin, some of the ones he has left on hers too. He sits on the floor with his back leaning on the side of the bed as she sits astride his hips, moving furiously, trying to punish him for crimes she doesn't care to remember.

Her whole body has started to protest the extended exercise and the excessiveness of the sex and yet he bites his lower lip and rotates her hips once more, keeping them both at the brink of coming once again, panting, and sore and still furious somehow.

It's like the years of ditching her and moving her legs twice as fast to keep up with his gigantic steps are all catching up. The countless times she was dismissed at first glance at a crime scene, the stupid, reckless decisions she had to put up with. The fucking endless paperwork.

The doe eyes of the women when he wore his stupid Hugo Boss suit while she ended up covered in mud, vile, or shit.

Twenty years worth of bottled up frustration asking for retaliation. He has to pay. Through sex, kind of hate-sex, apparently. The logic of that is a little lost on her at the moment but paradoxically is the only thing that makes sense, it's the only thing clear in her brain.

His fingers sink on her hips, her thighs, trying to control her rhythm but she won't allow it. He will have bruises there tomorrow but she doesn't alter her pace. She bites his throat and rakes his chest with her nails, the sounds coming out of him just plainly pornographic but at least he has finally shut up.

Mostly.

"Say my name." His voice is barely human, something between a growl and the sound of an old tree trunk cracking.

"No."

One of his hands moves along her body until it reaches her breast and plays with it none too gently. Good. She is most definitely not aiming for gentle.

She can feel the waves of her frustration building up as her body starts to raise to another orgasm when something snaps. It's something invisible and intangible but suddenly she can't remember why she was so angry a minute before. All the frustration, all the pent up passive-aggressiveness just evaporates and in its place there is a void, filling up with emotions of a different kind.

"Mulder."

The word falls of her lips as she searches his eyes with hers and finds them bright and alive, her fingers caressing softly the learned contours of his face. She has missed him, God, she has missed him so much.

Leaving him almost killed her. Witnessing his slow decay, the way he silently and faithfully gave up broke her in a million tiny pieces she is not sure she has managed to pick up yet.

She leans on him, his smell so familiar and comforting to her that emotion gets stuck into her throat and brings her to the edge. Her hips stutter, her whole body tightening up and her vision getting a little blurry as her osgarm starts to hit her.

Mulder's arm encircle her, his fingers roaming delicately over her body, his lips mumbling nonsense over her temple as he lets himself go and Scully can feel her heart seizing up inside her chest.

She has missed him so, so much.

"I wanted you back then," she confesses, soft, low, the words taking residence in the crook of his neck as Mulder's breathing slows down. It should be inconsequential now, after so many years and so many things but she _feel_ Mulder's smile against her hair, a soft chuckle making her chest vibrate along his, his arms tightening around her.

"I loved you back then," his voice is barely more than a whisper.

It's not literally true — it's _probably_ not literally true — but she feels her eyes welling up nevertheless, the little pieces of herself slowly coming back together, like a puzzle.

She nuzzles the side of his neck, below his ear and breathes in deeply. For the first time since they broke up, Scully feels that everything is going to be fine.


End file.
